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favourites. So far as the few remains and the reports of the old
-litteratores- allow us to form an opinion, they were short farces,
ordinarily perhaps of one act, the charm of which depended less on
the preposterous and loosely constructed plot than on the drastic
portraiture of particular classes and situations. Festal days and
public acts were favourite subjects of comic delineation, such as
the "Marriage," the "First of March," "Harlequin Candidate";
so were also foreign nationalities--the Transalpine Gauls,
the Syrians; above all, the various trades frequently appear
on the boards. The sacristan, the soothsayer, the bird-seer,
the physician, the publican, the painter, fisherman, baker, pass
across the stage; the public criers were severely assailed and still
more the fullers, who seem to have played in the Roman fool-world
the part of our tailors. While the varied life of the city thus
received its due attention, the farmer with his joys and sorrows
was also represented in all aspects. The copiousness of this rural
repertory may be guessed from the numerous titles of that nature,
such as "the Cow," "the Ass," "the Kid," "the Sow," "the Swine,"
"the Sick Boar," "the Farmer," "the Countryman," "Harlequin
Countryman," "the Cattle-herd," "the Vinedresser," "the Fig-
gatherer," "Woodcutting," "Pruning," "the Poultry-yard." In these
pieces it was always the standing figures of the stupid and the
artful servant, the good old man, the wise man, that delighted
the public; the first in particular might never be wanting--
the -Pulcinello- of this farce--the gluttonous filthy -Maccus-,
hideously ugly and yet eternally in love, always on the point
of stumbling across his own path, set upon by all with jeers
and with blows and eventually at the close the regular scapegoat.
The titles "-Maccus Miles-," "-Maccus Copo-," "-Maccus Virgo-,"
"-Maccus Exul-," "-Macci Gemini-" may furnish the good-humoured
reader with some conception of the variety of entertainment in the
Roman masquerade. Although these farces, at least after they came
to be written, accommodated themselves to the general laws of
literature, and in their metres for instance followed the Greek
stage, they yet naturally retained a far more Latin and more
popular stamp than even the national comedy. The farce resorted
to the Greek world only under the form of travestied tragedy;(15)
and this style appears to have been cultivated first by Novius,
and not very fr